Neglection In The Yellow Wallpaper

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The mind is a potent tool in which, without proper care or with untamed negative thoughts can distort our perspective of reality. Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes a story in which to describe the radical effects of neglection. The Yellow Wallpaper, The Journal and the nervous breakdown Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows in “The Yellow Wallpaper” are used to mimic the deterioration, isolation, and broken limits of the woman’s mind because of her mental neglection. The Yellow Wallpaper is the largest and most blatant of the symbols in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, paralleling her mind. In the beginning of the story she recognizes her mental illness, although she doesn’t completely understand it, and attempts to reach out and get help from her husband, …show more content…

The woman always alone when she writes quickly stops when other people are coming, the journal is isolation. At the end of her first journal entry she already shows that this is a defiant choice of hers. “There comes John, and I must put this away,-he hates to have me write word”(Gilman 2). This defiance, this act of consciously writing is a repercussion from neglection. Writing against her husband's will is creating her own, but isolating herself. She continues to be pushed away from others, until she does not want to come back. “But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!”(Gilman 7). Here and throughout many parts in the story she tells only herself of these discoveries in the wallpaper, through her journal. She does not want to tell other people she believes that they are trying to take away from her. This neglection created a crack in the foundation of their relationships, more pressure and more choices shattered …show more content…

At the end of the story the center stone of their relationship is dust. She loses more than their relationship, she loses grasp and reality and and clings to another. “I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?”(Gilman 9). She has been mentally neglected to the point where she doesn’t know where women come from, and furthermore she believes that she comes from the wallpaper. She has been neglected and pushed away until she slipped off the edge of sanity. Having already fallen off the edge of sanity she then believes that the best way to live is to escape mortality. “But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope...”(Gilman 9). Ending her own life through hanging she makes herself a demonstration of neglect. This also brings an element of irony, because of her drastic neglect she brought drastic attention to her. The mental collapse, limit and isolation were all shown through the symbols around the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” to demonstrate how neglection of a human being can lead to disaster. The husband in this story does not give the time and care to the woman that she needs. This neglection brought one of the most dramatic effects possible to a person, suicide. Although difficult to empathize with a person that struggles with depression, if they are neglected they will

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